Tetris therapy helps to prevent stress

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Researches at Oxford University have concluded that Tetris has psychological healing qualities after studying the effects of the game on people who were exposed to stressful images.

Subjects in the study were shown a video featuring disturbing images. They were then split into three groups with one group playing Tetris, one playing a Pub Quiz game, and the others left to sit and contemplate their thoughts.

After a 10-minute period, the scientists found those in the Tetris group reported the fewest number of flashbacks to the disturbing imagery.

A further test was done with a 4-hour gap, and the results were the same.

"We account for this based on current models of memory consolidation indicating that certain types of memory may be malleable for up to six hours", the report stated.

It also described how a visual-spacial experience like Tetris could be developed as a kind of "cognitive vaccine" against flashbacks or as an alternative to current forms of treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.

They must have been playing a different version of Tetris than the one that we're used to. The Tetris we know is infuriating, addictive and once it gets its claws into your brain there's no escape.

Sometimes we even wake up in the middle of the night, in a cold-sweat, shouting "the bricks, the bricks!"